The Cross stands firm while the world spins.

Great post today from Fr Hugh. One of those posts that really resonates and the key insight for me relates to the way that people of a progressive bent appear utterly blind to the obvious, factual folly of their situation. Ergo:

In this doctrinaire assertion Fr Baldovin seems to have put to bed his undoubted critical faculties and let ideology do the talking.

One might reasonably ask him in reply: how is it relevant that the young Catholics who prefer the old rite never experience its daily reality before the Council? The Catholics of the 1950s never experienced the daily reality of the liturgy of 1517. Or rather, they did. What, in reality, they did not experience was the socio-historical milieu of 1517. But the Roman rite of 1517 was substantially and essentially the same as that of 1950. The old rite no more supports the Middle Ages than it does the Renaissance or the period between the world wars… or today. It supports them all because it transcends them all. It offers perspective.

Liturgy transcends time. It is not wed to one age or society. Just as “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8) so too is the eucharistic liturgy, for it is Christ on the Cross offering himself to the Father for us and our salvation. The Mass is the Cross on Calvary hill manifest among us. The Carthusians got it spot on in their motto: Stat crux dum volvitur orbis—The Cross stands firm while the world spins.

Yet Fr Baldovin seems unwittingly to have recognised this:

My own guess is that many who want the older rite want it because it signals a stronger and clearer Catholic identity in the middle of a confusing and anchorless culture

He implies that this is somehow a deficient desire. I would counter that this is an integral part of a truly Catholic liturgical piety and sensibility.

As for Fr Baldovin’s ideological assertion that the old rite “embodies a rejection of much of what the council stood for,” he has descended to absurdity. The old rite was the Mass celebrated every day at the Council! How can it embody a rejection of the Council? Is he aware that the ecumenical movement started before the Council, when the old rite was the Mass uniting all Catholics? Dorothy Day was as grand an advocate for social justice and the poor as one could hope to find, and was nourished and empowered for most of her rich Catholic life by the old Mass. I won’t go on; to be honest it is a little infra dig even to engage with such a facile assertion.

If this is the line The Tablet will continue to promote then it will be dead before I am. Yet I wish Mr Walsh well. Let’s see what he makes of things at Clifton Walk.

The sooner The Tablet dies the better. I am all for differing opinions and intelligent discussion, but I personal feel that The Tablet legitimises dissent and pushes heretical ideas as if they were reasonable.

Fr Hugh gives a great over view of The Catholic Herald vs The Tablet just before the bit I have quoted which is, I think, accurate.

"many who want the older rite want it because it signals a stronger and clearer Catholic identity in the middle of a confusing and anchorless culture."

I feel this comment is key to future growth. I have seen in my own diocese how progressives refuse to acknowledge this, even when it confronts them directly. Our Youth Service for example, was run by a wonderful young priest who had about 200 coming to the monthly youth Mass which he started with adoration. The annual youth pilgrimage to Lourdes was over-subscribed. This year they don't have enough leaders and have been appealing for young people to come on the trip and the numbers at the youth Mass have declined drastically. When the Chaplain changed, the first thing the new progressive incumbent did was to remove adoration before Mass. A sign of the way things would go.

Despite the obvious failures, no one seems to realise, no one seems to care. No one is interested in what the young people want, they are only interested in feeding them what they think they want. As I posted here and as Fr Hugh points out above, what young people want is clearly something real, something challenging and meaty. We think they want cake, but they actually want steak and potatoes, and we keep giving them cake.

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